


Sand

by ladyoneill



Series: Lady O's Teen Wolf Bingo Stories [54]
Category: Teen Wolf (TV)
Genre: Gen, Nogitsune Trauma, Stilinski Family Feels
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-05-17
Updated: 2014-05-17
Packaged: 2018-01-25 11:54:50
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 646
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1647731
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ladyoneill/pseuds/ladyoneill
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>After the possession, Stiles has trouble facing anyone, so he runs the Preserve seeking an elusive peace.  He finds it in an unexpected place.</p>
            </blockquote>





	Sand

**Author's Note:**

> Written for the Cotton Candy Bingo prompt: beach. A bit sad but hopefully sweet enough to fill the prompt. I love the idea of a lot of the Preserve being unmapped.

His mother loved the beach. Raised in the midwest, she'd never seen the ocean until college at Berkeley, and after that she spent as much time as she could walking on the beach. It didn't matter what the weather was like, winter winds or summer breezes, rain or shine, even the occasional snow flake. She walked the beaches at least once a week.

She moved inland with John, a good two hours from the ocean, but still managed to get back once a month or so. Evenly heavily pregnant, she sat in the sand and watched the water crash on the rocks.

John used to joke that he was surprised Stiles wasn't born on the beach.

When he was a kid they still made trips to the beach, usually in San Francisco or along the northern California coast, but occasionally vacationing south to places like Santa Monica and San Diego. Stiles grew up loving the ocean and the sand beneath his feet, too.

When his mother died, that all ended. The rare vacation was to visit her parents'. The Saturdays in San Francisco stopped. His father worked sixty hours a week at least, drowning himself in both that and the bottle. Stiles pushed away all memories of his mom and made new ones in grass and trees.

At seventeen, a few months after the nogitsune, he spends most of his time when not in school or doing Pack things, alone. He can't be around people who don't know the truth, and those who do, he avoids when he can. The guilt is just too much for him to deal with. Scott, with his earnest puppy dog eyes, wants to help. Lydia tries to get him out of his head as often as she can. His dad walks on eggshells around him too much.

When it becomes too much--and that happens too often--Stiles goes for runs in the Preserve. The Hale House was condemned by the county and its ownership is tied up in court, but the land is still Derek's. The Hales own the entire Preserve, leasing some of it to the County for the public park, but Stiles has no fears of trespassing. It's Pack land. Despite what he's done, he's still Pack.

So, he runs, first on the established paths, then the deer trails he's learned to detect, finally forging his own paths, criss-crossing public and private land, going deeper and deeper into the forest.

And, then, one days, he stumbles out of the woods onto a pristine beach fronting a small lake, its blue water sparkling in the sun. Stunned, he stops running, his feet sinking into the sand. The whole area is clean, untouched. Along the edge of the lake driftwood litters the sand. Cattails wave in the breeze. Across the expanse of water he hears the sounds of frogs, and then a fish jumps.

How did he not know this existed?

Slowly Stiles crosses the stretch of beach and it feels so familiar, his feet sinking a bit with each step, the smell of water and vegetation in his nose, the ripples as the wind blows across the water, bringing a bit of spray to his skin. Memories of his mother return, but they're not painful. As he settles into the warm sand, wrapping his arms around his knees, he closes his eyes and sees his little hand in his mom's as they strolled and skipped along her favorite beach just outside of San Francisco, the Golden Gate in the distance, the sand warm and just gritty enough to make his toes twitch.

Even though the lake isn't an ocean, she would have loved it here.

Stiles takes off his shoes and socks and digs his toes into the sand and hears her joyful laugh in his head and starts to cry, but not painful tears.

Good tears.

End


End file.
